It’s not about posh, it’s about privilege
By Emma.
I wasn’t going to write about Benedict Cumberbatch’s complaintthat the UK is too ready and willing to “posh-bash” for two reasons – one I quite like him and I think he’s probably badly phrased a sentiment about being typecast.
Two, because this is a quite effort to raise his profile before his new show (about a very aristocratic aristocrat – funnily enough) comes out.
But his comments do raise a common problem – that of conflating the questioning of privilege with the questioning of background. And as such, I think this question – rather than the more simplistic “Do we bash the posh too much” line – is worth examining.
Tags: class
